The One-to-One Student Project at Via Lingua
As we have discussed in previous blog posts, one-to-one/private teaching will most likely be a normal part of your teaching repertoire: it’s a great way to add variety to your teaching schedule and to maintain a steady income. One major focus of the Via Lingua program is getting trainees ready to teach to private students, from finding the student to assessing their needs, and finally to creating lesson plans.
As soon as anyone finds out you are an English teacher, they will start requesting lessons! This is exciting but also intimidating if you are unsure of how to approach this scenario. You will need to be prepared with a strategy for how you will assess your potential private students’ levels in terms of all 4 major skills (reading, writing, speaking, and listening) and grammar. You will also need to ask a series of questions to your students to ensure you know what they want out of their lessons with you: after all, they are a paying customer!
The teacher’s goal is to then combine students’ perceived needs and level with what their actual needs and level are. Keep in mind that it is never enough to just have your students tell you what their level is as they are often not accurate at assessing this. Their self-assessment has been developed based on a number of factors and experiences, including what others have told them their levels are, their amount of confidence, and their exposure to authentic English language.
While the One-to-One project is intensive, our trainees walk away knowing exactly how to start creating a network of students and how to work with those students in such a way that the students want to keep coming back. Once you get a few students that you teach well, the referrals will start coming in!
These skills are relevant in both in-person lessons and online lessons, so learn how to teach private lessons and you will always have this skill in your back pocket wherever you are in the world!